Weekly Photo Challenge – Cheeky Grins

Being a grandma is such a joyful experience to me. I was with Autumn the first day of her life on September 28, 2017. It was an incredible feeling to hold her in my arms. I had the privilege to help taking care of her the first six out of the eight weeks. Then Mercy, Will, and Autumn were at my house during the Thanksgiving week. I’m looking forward to spending time with them for Christmas.

I try to understand and observe the infant’s vision development of the few months.

At birth, babies’ vision is abuzz with all kinds of visual stimulation. While they may look intently at a highly contrasted target, their primary focus is on objects 8 to 10 inches from their face or the distance to parent’s face.

During the first months of life, the eyes start working together and vision rapidly improves. Eye-hand coordination begins to develop. By eight weeks, babies begin to more easily focus their eyes on the faces of a parent or other person near them.

Babies begin to follow moving objects with their eyes and reach for things at around three months of age.

My observation of Autumn was that she started to follow objects with her eye movements before eight weeks old. She focused on her parents’ eyes and responded to them with her grins in the following photos. Autumn will be three months old when I see her in Christmas. I love her cheeky grins!

Like this:

Related

92 comments

Priceless photos! There is nothing more wonderful then a grandchild. I am sure your holidays will be even better. Oh, and great birthday. Sweet like Autumn and I share the same day. I feel blessed to see these precious moments. Happy Holidays. .

Thank you so much, Dahlia! She is getting big. My daughter is going back to work part-time, tomorrow. She started taking Autumn to daycare this past week – 3 days a week. Autumn seems to adjust well. I’m looking forward to see them in 9 days. 🙂

Absolutely adorable photo with Will. And you’ve caught Autumn’s “babyness” perfectly in those two last photos! It reminds me of what I read once about how in each stage of a child’s life they are their own person and they are exactly that person at the moment. How wonderful! 🙂

Thank you, Teresa! I think we try to smile and laugh more when talking to Autumn and encourage her to mirror our images. She likes to smile from first few weeks. She smiles when asleep. It’s so cute! 🙂

Thank you, Meenakshi! When I was on the phone with Mercy and heard Autumn’s voice, I wanted so much to hold her. Yes, learning about child development and being a teacher most of my life come in handy for family benefit. How are you doing these days? 🙂

she look so healthy
and nice take on the prompt –
I read a few comments here too –
and will chime in on one….
but when boys were very young – first couple weeks – I hung up those black/white and red cards for them
and sometimes stood up a book (with contrasting colors) near them to get some visual feeding. ha

Yes, “cheeky” has a somewhat negative connotation. But cheeky grin is different, so I went with it.
It makes sense to hang the mobile above the crib or rocker to attract the infants’ eye movements and head movements also.
Thanks.

yes- I had the mobiles hanging too – but I sometimes used picture books along the side of the crib during changes – it feels like so long ago – but I recall son2 would soak some of the pages up – like he was reading – and it was his reaction that even had me turn pages and remember to prop a book – hja

Yes, the new awareness is the tongue tie problem. Several of their friends’ babies have the same problem and got laser surgery. They were saying that moms who do bottle feeding from birth night not have aware the issue even if it was there. Only the breast feeding moms realize the problem.

By breast feeding, the mom realizes that the baby’s tongue is not extended long enough, so surgery needs to be done.
If the tongue tie was not corrected, kids would grow up with speech problem (slurring because the tongue can’t extend long enough and can’t touch the upper palate).

Miriam she is so sweet and I love her big eyes. Lucky Grandma to spend so much time with her 🙂 Thanks also for the baby facts I didn’t know baby’s didn’t have fully developed eye sight at birth. I just thought there eyes were very sensitive to light and brightness. All your tips are good to know. I don’t have children myself so these tips are helpful 🙂 Hope you are well. You sound very happy.

Thank you for your comment, Mandi. I didn’t know when I had my daughter. I didn’t pay attention to the infant’s eye sight until I wanted to know more about my granddaughter. So I learned something new also. My daughter also found out that when the baby is in the womb, he/she hear so many sounds – mom’s heart heats, growling stomach and noises from the organs. So the white noise is actually soothing and familiar to the babies. It helps them to go to sleep.
I’m glad these are helpful tips to you. Best wishes!! 🙂

Wow, that’s really cool.
My first year of teaching preschool, I had a Vietnamese girl, 4 years old, spoke French, Vietnamese, Chinese (she was a Chinese descent Vietnamese), came to U.S. and learned English, played with Hispanic kids and learned some Spanish. She switched languages when talked to different people (without accent).
When the language neurons are activated early in age, kids can speak more than one without accents.
I speak both English AND Chinese with accents… haha (I confused my brain)

well I tip my hat to you for having such clear english and chinese – wow –
and you are so right about the early neurologic activity – and with me – languages – esp. french – have always been tough for me to master. I could get A’s in class and spoke my parts and all – but retention – forget it. but maybe if i was in a place (immersed) and if I used the language more it would flow better – I dunno

About me

Miriam Hurdle grew up in Hong Kong where she went to college and worked for five years before coming to the United States. While in Hong Kong, she taught Chinese as a Second Language in Hong Kong Baptist University and the Chinese University of Hong Kong for three years. She was also the Director of Children’s Department at the Asian Outreach where she published four Chinese Children’s books.
Miriam Hurdle came to the United States for her graduate studies. She received her master’s degrees in Christian Ministry from Portland Seminary, Counseling from Seattle Pacific University, and Education Administration from California State University, Los Angles. After teaching in California public school for fifteen years, she was promoted to a school district administrative position. She went on to do the postgraduate studies and earned her Doctor of Education in Educational Leadership from La Verne University in California. Dr. Hurdle continued in her administrative position for ten years before her retirement.
In her retired life, Dr. Hurdle enjoys doing volunteer counseling, reading, writing, blogging, singing, drawing, watercolor painting, gardening, photographing, and traveling. Dr. Hurdle is married to Lynton Hurdle and has one married daughter and one granddaughter.